Cover your position

2014-06-12 12:00:00

When it comes to DCTF coverboys, which positions have made it most often?

By Greg Tepper DCTF Managing Editor

The 2014 Summer Editionis coming soon!

The 2014 Summer Edition of Dave Campbell's Texas Football — the 55th annual edition of "the bible of Texas Football" — is coming soon! Here's what you need to know:

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RELEASE DATE: The 2014 Summer Edition of Dave Campbell's Texas Football will hit shelves across Texas on Friday, June 20, though Legends and Champions members will get their copy early!

Perhaps you heard, but Dave Campbell’s Texas Football has been in the news lately.

The 55th annual edition of “the bible of Texas football” hits shelves next week, but now that the cover has been revealed, it enters the rich tapestry that is the history of Texas Football. It’s the 55th edition of the magazine, but it’s technically the 57th cover of the magazine — the 1998 and 1999 editions each had two separate covers.

And that is a lot of history to deal with. The cover of Texas Football has featured some of the best and brightest figures in Lone Star State gridiron history, and it’s always fun to take a look at the coverboys en masse, to give you a feel for just where this new cover fits the grand scheme of things.

Of particular interest today: positions. After all, we’ve got three different coverboys this year — a coach, a quarterback and a wide receiver — so how common is each position on the cover of the most prestigious football magazine in Texas?

We crunched the numbers, going over every cover in Texas Football history all the way back to 1960. We considered, for this study, the main focus of the cover — that is, the people most prominently featured. For example, if you look at this year’s cover, we consider Briles, Petty and Goodley as coverboys this year, while Texas coach Charlie Strong — up in the top-right — would not count.

And one more thing: the 1995 cover, which features a collage of Southwest Conference greats? Yeah, we’re just throwing that one out for the purposes of this study. It’s cool, but doesn’t really fit what we’re going for here.

All clear? Here’s what we came up with as far as positional breakdown:

Quarterback

34

Coach

23

Running Back

18

Defensive Lineman

5

Linebacker

5

Wide Receiver

5

Kicker

2

Defensive Back

1

Offensive Lineman

1

-The king of Cover Mountain, as you could’ve probably guessed, are the quarterbacks. They’re most likely to be the star player on a team, so it should be no surprise that they’ve had more than their share of coverage on the cover. Petty is the first Baylor quarterback to grace the cover; meanwhile, we’ve featured eight Texas quarterbacks, seven Texas A&M signal-callers and five Texas Tech quarterbacks to lead the pack.

-Coaches come in next, and Briles becomes the fourth Baylor coach to make the cover. What’s most interesting, to me at least, are the names you see more than once on this list: Mack Brown made it twice (1998 and 1999); so did RC Slocum (1993 and 1996); as did Spike Dykes (1990 and 1996). Meanwhile, coaching luminaries like Jackie Sherrill, Bill Yeoman, and Grant Teaff only made it once.

-And there’s a fun trivia question: who’s the only high school coach to make the cover of DCTF? G.A. Moore, in 2002.

-Goodley’s presence on the 2014 cover brings wide receivers into a three-way tie with defensive linemen and linebackers with five spots on the cover all-time. Here’s an interesting note on the linebackers: three of the five have come from Texas A&M (Brad Dusek in 1972, John Roper in 1988 and Dat Nguyen in 1998).

-Yes, two kickers made the cover (Texas’ Russell Erxleben and Texas A&M’s Tony Franklin). Yes, they were on the same cover, 1978. I know. I know.

-Only one offensive lineman and one defensive back have ever been DCTF coverboys, but it’s hard to argue against either one. TCU’s Marvin Godbolt, the face of the Frogs’ defensive revolution, was part of a wide-ranging cover in 2004, while Texas A&M’s Mo Moorman was Texas A&M’s first coverboy back in 1967.

Greg Tepper is the managing editor of Dave Campbell's Texas Football and TexasFootball.com.

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WaterCooler Talk

I started collecting Texas Football when I was 12. I have every issue. All are signed by Dave Campbell except the last two. I hope he comes to San Antonio on his promotional tour so I can get those tw...Martin ,